Posts Tagged ‘photography’

“I often fear that men and women are irrevocably strangers to each other, irreconcilably unsuited, :’almost as if they were from different planets. But there is an intense need for coupling in spite of it all. Even if relationships are destructive, people cling together. It’s a biochemical reaction, it stimulates that part of your brain that is only satisfied by love, heroin, or chocolate; love can be an addiction. I have a strong desire to be independent, but at the same time a craving for the intensity that comes from interdependency. The tension this creates seems to be a universal problem: the struggle between autonomy and dependency.The Ballad of Sexual Dependency begins and ends with this premise…

I’ve seen how the mythology of romance contradicts the reality of coupling and perpetuates a definition of love that creates dangerous expectations. This mythology doesn’t allow for the ambivalence that’s natural in any sustained relationship.

What you know emotionally and what you crave sexually can be wildly contradictory. I often feel that I am better suited to be with a woman; my long-term friendships with women are bonds that have the intensity of a marriage, or the closeness of sisters. But a part of me is challenged by the opacity of men’s emotional makeup and is stimulated by the conflict inherent in relationships between men and women.
Sex itself is only one aspect of sexual dependency. Pleasure becomes the motivation, but the real satisfaction is romantic. Bed becomes a forum in which struggles in a relationship are defused or intensified. Sex isn’t about performance; it’s about a certain kind of communication founded on trust and exposure and vulnerability that can’t be expressed any other way. Intense sexual bonds become consuming and self-perpetuating. You become dependent on the gratification. Sex becomes a microcosm of the relationship, the battleground, an exorcism…” -Nan Goldin

In the gallery… on the right hand side of your screen ———————————————————->

Marilyn Minter is a photographer and photo realist painter who takes us all to a world where color is king and everyone is covered in oil and sweat and all we do is roll around in glitter and suck on diamonds and lick candy off each other.